Meklit Hadero is a singer, musician, arts organizer and Director & Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. Born in Ethiopia, Meklit has since lived in twelve cities, on three continents, and brings her international, inter-cultural experience to all her creative work. As a solo artist writing original compositions, Meklit draws on her folk, blues, and Ethiopian roots to create her songs. Lyrically focused with intimate, spare arrangements, her music imparts a kind of tenderness towards life, a sweetness that soars. Meklit considers herself an 'artist-musician,' bringing together visual arts with music whenever possible, and working interdisciplinarily and collaboratively to create fully rounded performance experiences.

In April of 2007, the Red Poppy Art House received a grant from the San Francisco Foundation and the Fund for Artists to commission a group of musicians, including Meklit, on the composition of a body of music titled Nefasha Ayer: The Space of In-between. This in-progress body of music explores a transcontinental odyssey of multiple characters that find themselves caught between national identities, cultures, and politics, and brings together traditional Ethiopian rhythms and melodies with Jazz and Hip-hop. Meklit is also being commissioned to write music by the Brava Theater Company for the new Brian Thorstenson play, "Over the Mountain," which tells the story of artists and dissidents who disappear in politically tumultuous times. The play will premier in April of 2009.

In December of 2007, Meklit released a limited edition pressing of her first recording, titled "Eight Songs," which was produced by Eric Moffat. Seventeen Bay Area artists handpainted/collaged/created the covers for this edition, and each is a unique piece of visual artwork unavailable anywhere else.

Meklit has been profiled three times by the San Francisco Chronicle, once by the quarterly arts journal Hoboeye, and has been interviewed and performed twice on the KPFA morning show. She has played at the Red Poppy Art House, the Bottom of the Hill, the San Francisco Public Library, La Pena Cultural Center, Amnesia, the Mission Cultural Center, the Bumbershoot Music Festival, the de Young Museum, the Cowell Theater, the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis, the University of the West Indies in Barbados, and has toured in the Pacific Northwest. In mid 2009, Meklit will is being commissioned for a month-long residency at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Meklit, "...sings of fragility, hope and self-empowerment, and exudes all three. What's irresistible, above all, is her cradling, sensuous, gentle sound. She is stunning." -SF Chronicle

::meklit hadero::